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Quilombos on São Tomé, or in Search of Original Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Extract

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A few years ago I was reading a doctoral dissertation concerned with the history of São Tomé, when one particular word fairly leapt off the page. It came at the end of an episode telling how a particular ethnic group on the island today had arrived there. The story told how a number of Angolan slaves, later called Angolares, were shipwrecked just off the coast of São Tomé in 1544 (or 1554), “though (of course) no accurate date or account of the circumstances exists.” The survivors swam to shore and moved into the bush “building there a series of small villages called Quilombos.” It was that word, “Quilombos,” that made me jump to attention, for it is a very important word in Angolan history and a written record of it from either 1544 or 1554 would be sixty to seventy years earlier than the hitherto first-known mention of the word. If it were true, profound revisions to the accepted political history in Angola during the sixteenth century would be called for, and even the chronology of the onset of the Lunda (Ruund) kingdom far inland would have to be revised.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 23 , January 1996 , pp. 453 - 459
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1996

References

Notes

1. Garfield, Robert, “A History of São Tomé Island, 1470-1655” (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1971)Google Scholar, 269n59 claims that the term Angolar was common by the end of the sixteenth century for any “wild” black. He maintained this assertion in his A History of São Tomé Island, 1470-1655: the Key to Guinea (San Francisco, 1992)Google Scholar, 77n43, only changing “wild” to “found in the forests of S. Tomé.” I can find no evidence for this claim, however expressed.

2. Garfield, , “History,” 56Google Scholar; idem., History, 76-77. The date was changed to 1554 and the words “of course” have been added to the latter work.

3. Heintze, Beatrix, Fontes para a história de Angola do século XVII, (Wiesbaden, 1985), 126Google Scholar, also realized that Garfield's passage was the earliest mention of the term.

4. Miller, Joseph, Kings and Kinsmen: Early Mbundu States in Angola (Oxford, 1976), 161-75, 194–201.Google Scholar Miller showed how Jaga society had been fashioned out of a motley collection of adventurers and refugees within their kilombo warcamps, starting ca. 1550.

5. Ravenstein, E.G., The Strange Aventures of Andrew Battell of Leigh (London, 1901).Google Scholar

6. Cf. Bràsio, António, Monumenta Missionaria Africana: Africa Ocidental, 7 (Lisbon, 1956), 19.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., 6:316.

8. Ibid., 6:284.

9. Tenreiro, Francisco, A ilha de São Tomé (Lisbon, 1961), 63, 72.Google Scholar

10. Tenreiro, , “Descrição da ilha de St.Tomé no século XVI,” Garcia de Orta, 1 (1953), 219–27Google Scholar, written in 1949, completed in 1951. For the quilombos see ibid., 224.

11. Ibid., 227n19.

12. Ibid., 219n1.

13. Machado, Augusto Reis, ed., Viagem de Lisboa à ilha de S.Thomé (Lisbon, n.d.).Google Scholar

14. Omboni, Tito, Viaggi nell'Africa Occidental (Milan, 1845), 257–63.Google Scholar Omboni used the Portuguese translation of 1812 because it was available to him on the island.

15. Apparently this text did not occur in the first edition (1550) and was included in the second (1554), but I could not check this directly. The Italian preface (114) makes clear that the text went to H. Fracastoro, Ramusio's main collaborator—contrary to the claims of the editor of the first Portuguese edition, who mentioned Ramusio himself.

16. Ramusio, Navigationi, 116v– 117.

17. A systematic search through the entire Monumenta of Bràsio as far as 1699 yielded nothing, nor did any other source in published text editions.

18. Garfield, , “History,” 56–58Google Scholar; idem., History, 77-79, relying on Tenreiro in both cases. Matos, Raimundo José da Cunha, Compêndio histórico das possessões de Portugal na Africa (Rio de Janeiro, 1963Google Scholar; but written in the 1830s), paragraph 199, cites a document, now lost, from 13 September 1574, allowing the recruitment of condemned murderers or exiles into the armed forces to fight in the bush. The wording of a document of 1591 is very similar. Cf. Bràsio, , Monumenta, 425–26.Google Scholar Ibid., 461-63 (another document of 1593) links such measures explicitly to threats posed by “rebels and negroes in the bush.” None of these documents uses the term “Angolares.”

19. The first report in Bràsio, , Monumenta, 3, 1953, 271–72Google Scholar, mentioning millitary action against negroes in the bush occurs in a short report by the bishop and talks of several military actions against them over an indeterminate period of time before July 1584.

20. Ibid., 3:389.

21. Negreiros, A. Almada, História ethnogràphica da Ilade S. Thomé (Lisbon, [1895]), 59–61Google Scholar, (date of shipwreck, 1540), 293-95, citing Cunha Matos and Lopes de Lima.

22. Lima, José Joaquim Lopes de, Ensaio sobre a statistica das posessões Portugueses, 2/1 (Lisbon 1844)Google Scholar; Matos, Cunha, Compêndio; and Corografia histórica das ilhas de São Tomé, Principe, Annobom e Fernão do Pó (Porto, 1842).Google Scholar

23. Garfield, , “History,” 313–14.Google Scholar

24. Lopes de Lima, Ensaio, Bk. 2, pt. 1, subpart 9. In his preface (xi, xin2), he already told the story and commented that “Angolenses” would be better Portuguese, but Angolares it is.

25. Matos, Cunha, Compêndio, 7.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., 103. See also paragraphs 198 and 199 for the 1574 irruption of the Angolares.

27. Ibid., 127, paragraph 257.

28. Garfield, , “History,” 314Google Scholar without giving his evidence for this. That Cunha Matos had access to Rosàrio Pinto's manuscript is clear from his Compêndio, 127, paragraph 257. Although both Tenreiro and Garfield claim to have used the manuscript, neither used its passage about the Angolares. Cf. Branco, Fernando Castelo, “Subsídios para o estudo dos ‘angolares’ de São Tomé,” Studia, 33 (1971), 153n11.Google Scholar

29. Ambrósio, António, “Manuel Rosàrio Pinto,” Studia, 30/31 (1970), 231–329Google Scholar, published the complete text of the latter's “Relação.” The relevant passage is on 241. Garfield, , “History,” 316Google Scholar, claimed that the manuscript dates from 1732. Ambrósio, , “Manuel Rosàrio Pinto,” 218Google Scholar, proves from the text itself that it was completed in 1734. It is not known when he began to write his relation, except that it was many years earlier. In his dedication he said that he wrote it “during the intervals which my queixas [grievances, sickness, or perhaps duties] allowed me.” The author was born in São Tomé in 1666 (206) and, except for his years in the seminary, lived there all his life.

30. Branco, Castelo, “Subsídios,” 151.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 156-58. All the “scientific” evidence cited is quite dubious.

32. Ibid., 155.

33. Rosàrio Pinto, a contemporary, mentioned that the “negros Angola” had taken some slaves from the farms of the settlers to their villages, for which “aldeas” was used, whereupon the govenor sent soldiers to destroy their settlements. Cf. Ambrósio, “Manuel Rosàrio Pinto,” 304.9.

34. E.g. Kent, R. K., “Palmares, an African State,” JAH, 6 (1965), 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the first reference (1692), 164 (uncommon in the seventeenth century).